Has anyone tried Clarity Ferm (Brewers Clarex) from White Labs?

Schwind said:

She lives in Sheldon up in the far northwest corner. If you've never heard if it I'm not surprised. It's a pretty small town.
I've wanted to grow my own hops but don't have the right yard or climate. It's a bit to warm and dry here in the summer. What types are you growing?

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Sorry about the delay in responding - pretty busy I grow Cascades, Fuggles, Hallertau, Centennial, Chinook, Magnum, Mt Hood, and Zeus (of CTZ, same as Columbus). I REALLY love the Zeus variety and it is a great producer. I highly recommend it to all you hop-heads out there who are looking to grow some hops. It produces more hops per square foot than anything else I have grown.

I'm brewing up the NB phat tyre clone extract recipe, so no wheat to worry about. Thanks for the tips.

I will definitely post my results after I finish.

I've read in a couple threads that Daura uses Clarity Ferm, but I haven't seen any actual source cited. Does anyone have one? I searched the forums with no luck.

A friend of mine with Celiac disease tried Daura & had no adverse reactions, so I'd like to give it a try.

So I brewed an IPA for a gluten intolerant friend. The OG was 1.064 and I added the clarity ferm when I pitched the yeast. I didn't test it because these things are pricey. She drank it, said it was awesome but got a headache later in the evening. She said she felt fine the next day but the headache was bad the night before.
I'll try again with a lower gravity beer but the initial test is indeterminate. She said if she has any gluten at all she feels terrible the next day but that didn't happen. She went back to redbridge for the time being.

It did lighten the body a bit and my wife said it was a little one note compared to the gluten full version. The gluten full version was one of the best beers I've made to date. I'll post the recipe if anyone wants it.
Good luck to all who are trying to help a gluten intolerant friend or themselves out.
Cheers,
Mike

Just read through this thread, this is my first time hearing about clarity-ferm, and I am eager to try this! My wife is a celiac and has wanted to try some of the products of my obsession, but the gluten content has held her back. I know this is a relatively new product, but reading through this I still had a question on the timing of the gluten removing properties. How long are you guys waiting for it to work? Thanks!

chefmike said:

really fascinating. I will keep watching this product

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+11

You just add Clarity Ferm when you pitch your yeast. Think of it as an aid in fermentation in that it breaks down glutens into fermentable components. You just add it and do everything else as normal. One thing to note - I am not sure how well it works on wheat, so stick to barley for now. Charlie P commented on this in his Zymurgy article, and I got a positive for gluten result on the 2 beers I brewed with wheat. The barley malt beers came through with flying colors!

The results are in!

I brewed NB's Phat Tyre Extract kit just as the instructions state and added clarity ferm at the same time that I added the yeast. I had to travel for work so unfortunately I left the beer on the trub for 4 weeks. I bottle conditioned the beer for 3 weeks. Unfortunately, I do not have much experience with homebrewing yet so I do not know for sure if anything was atypical in the process b/c of the clarity ferm. I did not notice anything different however. The final beer tastes great and was very clear.

I gave my mom (who has celiac disease) the beer to try. She typically gets very sick 3 days after eating something that has wheat in it. She drank the beer last Friday and as of Monday there were no symptoms whatsoever. Amazing.

She told me that it had been 28 years since her last "real" beer. Its an amazing feeling to be able to give my mom something that she has had to do without for so long.

Thank you white labs!!!

j_dub4t said:

unfortunately I left the beer on the trub for 4 weeks

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You mean fortunately.... search for Autolysis and posts by Revvy and you'll come up with it (and also 'boogie-man') .

I'm about to try Clarex for the first time for my GF who has Hashimoto's syndrome (an autoimmune disease) which means, among other things, that she can have no gluten or yeast. Looks like I'll be using Clarex and a .5 micron filter.

I was thinking that there could have been an advantage to it staying in primary for that long. Perhaps to give the enzyme enough time to work?

Next I would like to investigate how much time is required for the clarex to do its thing. Maybe do a split batch and bottle at different times? If bottle conditioned, I would think that the beer would have the mixing and turbulence from the yeast that would be present in primary fermentation. I have heard that this aids the enzyme. Does anyone have any thoughts on the effectiveness of enzymes once bottled?

j_dub4t said:

The results are in!

I brewed NB's Phat Tyre Extract kit just as the instructions state and added clarity ferm at the same time that I added the yeast. I had to travel for work so unfortunately I left the beer on the trub for 4 weeks. I bottle conditioned the beer for 3 weeks. Unfortunately, I do not have much experience with homebrewing yet so I do not know for sure if anything was atypical in the process b/c of the clarity ferm. I did not notice anything different however. The final beer tastes great and was very clear.

I gave my mom (who has celiac disease) the beer to try. She typically gets very sick 3 days after eating something that has wheat in it. She drank the beer last Friday and as of Monday there were no symptoms whatsoever. Amazing.

She told me that it had been 28 years since her last "real" beer. Its an amazing feeling to be able to give my mom something that she has had to do without for so long.

Thank you white labs!!!

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Here's a recipe I did for my wife w/ Celiac, results were the same. :rockin:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f62/cornstalk-ale-spotted-cow-inspired-gluten-reduced-245561/

We made up a simple amber for my buddy who has celiac. I'm happy to report that he is now able to consume my brews!

He is like a kid at Christmas being able to drink barley based beers again. I noticed no difference between the 5gal we added it to, and the one we didn't.

I'm going to bump this one up because I can. I have used this stuff (WLN4000 Clarity Ferm) for a few beers just recently to kill chill haze. Unfortunately I had to dump a few of those beers for unrelated reasons, however, I do have a fruit beer recipe (using Saskatoon berries) and a pilsner that I used it in that will be good to go. I'll pick up those EZ Gluten kits and test them out when they are finished.

Coincidentally, there is a gluten free homebrew challenge coming up and everyone who entered is using sorghum syrup... or at least we were given that, and the beer I brewed with it tastes like crap, so if I can get away with using Clarity Ferm to kill out most the gluten, I think awesomeness will ensue...

I'll post an update here when I have my results on the gluten.

I grabbed a five pack of this for testing. My mom is sensitive to wheat (and I think some of that got passed down to me), so I'm brewing up an oatmeal stout and a Belgian Blond and trying out the Clarity Ferm. I'll post back with the (not-so-techincal) results!

After trying the product on an oatmeal stout (with flaked oats) and a Belgian Blonde, I'll say I had mixed results. I do not doubt the effectiveness of this product in removing glutens from the finished beer.

The Belgian Blonde (an all-malt recipe) was exactly what I wanted. In fact, the keg was gone at the party in around 2-3 hours. People loved it.

The oatmeal stout was underwhelming. It seems the Clarex stripped out a lot of things that make an oatmeal stout an oatmeal stout. The head doesn't last and is tiny. The body is thin as well. It's almost like drinking a roasty, nutty and chocolatey flavored glass of water. Very strange.

Not sure about oats, but I brewed a batch of "small" Denny Conn's Rye IPA (more of an APA, about 6.2%) and it turned out very well. I tested it with the EZ-Gluten test and it came through just fine (<5ppm) so I tried it with my celiac friends. They loved it! I have also had some with other people and all thought it was very tasty. My point is that Clarity Ferm seemed to work well with rye. I will try an oatmeal stout but I can't imagine why it would affect the body of that beer. Maybe there was something else? I know the straight barley and barley with rye beers that I brewed seemed fine.

How has this worked for eliminating chill haze?

I cannot say as I have never had issues with clarity in any of my beers. Sorry

On my high gravity beers this didn't do anything. I really think this needs to be used in conjunction with filtering to reap the benefits. Just dumping it into a fermentor did nothing for my clarity.

Braufguss said:

After trying the product on an oatmeal stout (with flaked oats) and a Belgian Blonde, I'll say I had mixed results. I do not doubt the effectiveness of this product in removing glutens from the finished beer.

The Belgian Blonde (an all-malt recipe) was exactly what I wanted. In fact, the keg was gone at the party in around 2-3 hours. People loved it.

The oatmeal stout was underwhelming. It seems the Clarex stripped out a lot of things that make an oatmeal stout an oatmeal stout. The head doesn't last and is tiny. The body is thin as well. It's almost like drinking a roasty, nutty and chocolatey flavored glass of water. Very strange.

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From what I have researched thus far, the additive doesn't remove gluten from the beer, or break it down. This, at least according to one of the guys I've emailed at White Labs. It essentially renders the gluten protein inert, as well as the proteins related to chill haze. I don't think the additive had an effect on the body of your beer. That could be due to other issues in the process.

I had a pilsner that I brewed that turned out crystal clear in 4 weeks, had great body and mouthfeel and a creamy head on it. I used the Clarity Ferm in it. Since then, I've been using it in all of my beers without any noticeable effect on flavour.

smokinghole said:

On my high gravity beers this didn't do anything. I really think this needs to be used in conjunction with filtering to reap the benefits. Just dumping it into a fermentor did nothing for my clarity.

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It won't do anything for your clarity of yeast and other particulate that are still floating around in the beer. It only helps with chill haze, which can't be filtered out of the beer. I agree that filtration or some other type of fining (I use polyclar) would be required to clear the beer sooner. I have a barley wine that didn't go crystal clear for at least 4 months without filtering or fining.

I and Charlie would beg to differ with you - go to this link - "http://www.examiner.com/beer-in-national/gluten-free-beer-reduced-gluten-beer-offers-real-beer-taste-for-celiac-impaired" (For some reason the URL option does not work on this site, so I just posted the URL.)

And I have used Clarity Ferm successfully to remove/break down glutens so that the beer was safe for my celiac friends. I did 2 different 10-gallon batches where I split them between 2 fermenters, one with and one without Clarity Ferm. I tested both after fermentation. The 5 gallons without CF came in off the charts for gluten content, while the other 5 came in under 5 PPM.

The reason that White Labs (and the makers of Brewer's Clarex, DSM) doesn't say that it removes gluten is because they do not want the hassle of dealing with the product that was designed as a clarifier. I use EZGluten (ezgluten.com) to test my results and so far they have been consistent.

If you're referring to my comment about it not getting rid of gluten, I will note that I do stand by my remarks, on the basis that rendering gluten inert will still fool a standard ELISA based quantitative gluten analysis test, even if the proteins still exist in solution. They will just simply not react to the test because the proteins no longer exhibit the behaviour the tests were designed to detect. They don't detect glutens at a molecular level. If the molecule sticks in the test, then you have a positive result for gluten. If not, because it is rendered inert, the test will not show detectable gluten.

To truly do an analysis on whether the gluten protein actually breaks up and drops out of solution, you would need to put a sample under a mass spectrometer to detect the protein molecules. This is research I would like to do, but time and money are issues.

EDIT: My opinions on the matter are a direct result of discussions with White Labs and Health Canada regarding the possibility of labelling a product gluten free. At best as far as I can tell, it could be called celiac safe, but not gluten free. If the enzyme does break up the proteins, it still couldn't be classified as gluten free unless you could prove that broken proteins don't cause issues in gluten sensitive people. Further research and testing would need to be done for Health Canada to let you call a beer celiac safe using this enzyme. White Labs is interested in further research on this.

My celiac friends provided me with the proof I needed. But for the scientifically-minded brewer, here is a scientific explanation of what exactly happens with Brewer's Clarex/Clarity-Ferm (from "http://noglutennoproblem.blogspot.com/2010/10/product-review-estrella-damm-daura.html"). I am not a scientist, but I was able to understand this:
peterbronski [the author of the post] said...
Hi Otis... Thanks for your comment and caution. As you probably know, Brewers Clarex isn't the only way brewers reduce the amount of gluten in their beers - selecting low-protein varieties of barley, several steps of the brewing process, and prolonged cold storage (or other clarifying methods) all incrementally serve to reduce the total gluten present in a beer.

As far as peptides go, I think your concern is understandable, but - in my opinion - unfounded. I've interviewed several prominent Celiac researchers and brewing scientists on this topic, and have also read the peer-reviewed journal articles on the topic. Here are some things to keep in mind:

For starters, if you're interested in the citation for the original research mentioned in the LiveScience article link you provided, here it is:

"www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20650871"

Brewers Clarex is classified as a prolyl endoprotease, which basically means a "protein eating" enzyme that specifically targets the amino acid proline. The research you cite found that three peptides - each about 12 amino acids long - seem to cause many of the Celiac related problems. Scientists have previously sequenced barley hordein (for example, in this study in Biomedical and Life Sciences: "www.springerlink.com/content/a112273645778415/") and found that proline occurs more frequently than every 12 amino acids. It then stands to reason that barley hordein "digested" by proline-seeking Brewers Clarex would yield peptides too small to cause a Celiac reaction.

This seems to hold up in more recent studies. One study published in a 2006 issue of the American Journal of Physiology ("www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16690904") and a 2008 study published in the journal Gut ("www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17494108") both found that the prolyl endoprotease used in Brewers Clarex sufficiently degraded gluten to levels safe for Celiacs. They determined this not only by testing for full gluten, but also by looking for T cell immune reactivity to partial gluten peptides. In other words, the barley hordein peptides remaining after using Brewers Clarex are either too small or not the right type to cause a Celiac gluten response.

Thanks for that great info gaviga, lots of great reading in those articles. My wife has been symptom free after my beers so far with the Clara ferm!

Thanks. That is just the kind of research I was looking for. Looks like I'll have a bit of reading to do. I'll hopefully get an opinion on the matter from Health Canada once I can get a handle on it.

Cheers!

I tried it and didn't think it did much for eliminating chill haze. I still wound up filtering the beer.

gaviga said:

This seems to hold up in more recent studies. One study published in a 2006 issue of the American Journal of Physiology ("www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16690904") and a 2008 study published in the journal Gut ("www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17494108") both found that the prolyl endoprotease used in Brewers Clarex sufficiently degraded gluten to levels safe for Celiacs. They determined this not only by testing for full gluten, but also by looking for T cell immune reactivity to partial gluten peptides. In other words, the barley hordein peptides remaining after using Brewers Clarex are either too small or not the right type to cause a Celiac gluten response.

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Wow, that's a very interesting study!

Do you know if there are any guidelines, e.g. down a 5mL vial of Clarity Ferm and then you can have a slice of pizza? My Celiac girlfriend would love that...

I'm interested in using Clarity Ferm to brew a beer that my celiac friend can drink.

How does it work? I just dump the vial in along with the yeast, then everything else like normal? (i.e., let it sit in a bucket for a couple weeks, rack it to a carboy for another couple weeks, cold crash for a few days, then keg it.)

rglarson13 said:

How does it work? I just dump the vial in along with the yeast, then everything else like normal? (i.e., let it sit in a bucket for a couple weeks, rack it to a carboy for another couple weeks, cold crash for a few days, then keg it.)

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Yep, I just throw it in exactly when I pitch my yeast. I'm not sure if there is a minimum time it needs, I've just waited till fermentation is over.

swolfe said:

Wow, that's a very interesting study!

Do you know if there are any guidelines, e.g. down a 5mL vial of Clarity Ferm and then you can have a slice of pizza? My Celiac girlfriend would love that...

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Presumably the highly acidic environment of the gut, along with digestive enzymes would destroy the Clarity Ferm before it could break down gluten in food. However, it sounds like Clarity Ferm is similar to or the same as AN-PEP (Aspergillus Niger Prolyl Endoprotease), which has been used in human trials, almost exactly as you describe (down some AN-PEP, and then bring on the gluten...). See: http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT00810654

A real important note that I received from WhiteLabs is to add Clarity Ferm immediately after the wort cools. I tried a few batches of adding when dry-hopping 7-10 days after start of fermentation and found that the batches do not pass EX Gluten test or my gut test. My lucky brother-in-law now gets 20gal of fine ale.

Info from WhiteLabs

Something else that might help with the gluten levels is A journal article by Anita Van Landschoot "Gluten-free barley malt beers", Cerevisia, Volume 36, Issue 3, October 2011, Pages 93&#8211;97
Finds that tannin levels during brewing can reduce gluten in the final beer (per the abstract, I'm still trying to get the paper).

This is in the instructions that come with Clarity Ferm. As a clarifying agent or as a gluten reducing agent, it must be added with or just prior to the yeast being pitched. I add it after I rack the chilled wort into my carboys. I add the Clarity Ferm, pitch the yeast, oxygenate, then I shake the carboys as an extra step to get everything mixed up and fully oxygenated. Great fermentations and gluten-free beer!

I have some of this stuff in my fridge but keep forgetting to use it on brew days.

Check the date - Clarity Ferm does have an expiration date.

Bob said:

Polyclar (PVPP) is the only additive product of which I am aware which can reduce chill haze.

In my opinion, the best way to reduce haze is to use proven techniques which don't allow haze precursors (high-molecular-weight proteins and polyphenols)

Procedures like:

If you use a protein rest in the mash, don't let it go on too long.
Add hops after you start to see hot break.

Cheers,

Bob

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Chill haze can be reduced by a number of additives; PVPP traps polyphenol molecules and pulls them out of solution. Silica gels, hydrogels, or xerogels can trap proteins in a similar way to which PVPP works on polyphenols. -They need to be filtered out like, PVPP, though.

Benotonite, commonly used in wine making can be used in beer but generally isn't; I can't remember why.

Tannic acid works to precipitate protein but creates a super fluffy break material that causes large beer losses.

Papian enzyme breaks down proteins much like a protein rest but I generally wouldn't recommend it as it can easily go way too far and kill your beer head.



I strongly disagree that preventing a long protein rest will help at all; the first thing that happens during a protein rest is that high molecular weight proteins (the chill haze forming ones) get broken down into smaller proteins, then poly peptides, then peptides and amino acids. A long protein rest could certainly be detrimental to beer head but should actually help reduce chill haze.

Waiting for the hot break to add hops I also don't understand. The hops introduce additional polyphenols; during the boil they'll combine with proteins and form our break material; I'd like more information on this but my guess is that this will likely increase chill haze precursors, not reduce them.



Adam